The afternoon started with lunch in the BBC canteen with gave the visitors an opportunity to celebrity spot. After grabbing something to eat the group met together in reception before moving on to the meeting room, the former BBC radio studio.

In this session Jim Clarke, News Gathering Editor for North West Tonight at BBC Manchester who led all the sessions looked through newspapers highlighting what made a good story and how one has to know the audience one is writing for. The group looked through a variety of different newspapers to see which stories caught their eye and discussed why.

BBC Visit Slideshow

After a coffee break the group looked at how to write stories which would gain wider appeal. Jim presented the group with a series of random press releases that a programme, such as North West Tonight, is sent on a regular basis and how many stories they received did not have an angle they could use!

The session closed with a couple of people offering examples of local interest stories and Jim giving advice on how to develop them for a wider audience.

Jim ended the session giving out his contact details and welcoming members of the group to contact him if they had any stories or if they needed advice.

All the group were really positive about the experience and took a great deal away from their visits to the BBC. People were incredibly enthused and wanted to develop things further.

The groups from Salford and north Manchester even had stories which Jim said he might consider for inclusion on North West Tonight.

The group, of about twelve community reporters, went to a meeting room (a former broadcast radio studio) where after refreshments Jim Clarke, News Gathering Editor for North West Tonight at BBC Manchester ran at session giving an introduction to journalism. Jim, who has a background in newspaper and television journalism, was able to draw on his experiences to show the group the best way to find and develop a story!

Whilst most of the Community Reporters there were already writing stories on their blogs, the emphasis so far had been on the mechanics of setting up a blog, pubishing text, images, audio and video. The sessions at the BBC were more about how to create and write an eye catching story which would engage with the audience.

The group left the second session positive and enthused with lots of ideas. Their “homework” was to come up with an outline for a story which could be developed at the next session, the following week.

The sessions, which ran over three weeks from April into May, were held at the BBC studios on Oxford Road.

The first session, which was attended by approximately sixteen Community Reporters, was an opportunity to look behind the scenes of North West Tonight (The BBC’s flagship news programme for the North West). People got an opportunity to either sit in the studio or in the gallery as the programme went out live giving the Community Reporters a real insight into how a news programme is put together.

After the show was broadcast presenter Gordon Burns gave the visitors an explanation of his role in presenting the programme and he explained some of the “behind the scenes” technology that the programme used such as autocues, running orders, back projections etc.

People also had an opportunity to talk to fellow presenter Dianne Oxberry who presents the weather forecast on North West Tonight.

All the reporters really enjoyed their visit to look behind the scenes at North West Tonight and it whetted their appetite for the sessions which started a fortnight later.